Member # 83 of the
Keystone Garage Club
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"Adventures of Peg Leg Pete"
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My "Fun" Vehicles |
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Click on whichever of my vehicles above to see more about it. |
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My Favorite Links: |
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Welcome to my homepage. Enjoy some cool links to whatever hits my fancy.
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I am looking for an issue of April 1992 "Dirt Wheels Magazine".
Email me if you would like to sell one.
Above: Melissa and I at Beaver Springs Dragway.
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I am interested in arcade games. Email me what you would like to sell. I got interested in video arcades at a young age. The first video
game I remember seeing and playing was in school when I was in about 1st or 2nd grade.
One of the teachers brought in a "PONG" TV game and held a tournament during
recess for anyone interested. It was the newest thing. Heck, I got one and still
have it and it still works. It was called the Odyssey 2000. |
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Below: "My Arcades" RoadBlasters! My newest game!  Grand Champion! I have sold this game  Hot Rod Queen Slots 
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I guess my first memories of larger arcades came from a trip to the
Fairlane Village Mall in Pottsville, also when I was a kid. It would have been early
80's, possibly late 70's. They had an arcade there called "Space Port".
It was all made up to look like you were wandering around in a space station. the
most popular video games and new releases were broadcast on two monitors mounted
at the entrance top the "Space Port" where they could be seen throughout
that area of the mall. This is where I saw the first Laser disc games like "Dragon's
Lair", "Space Ace", and another one I can't quite remember the name.
I'll add it when I remember it. Games were only a quarter and usually looked nothing
as real as today. This added to the imagination factor of these games though and
the new ones just don't leave me with the fascination of the classics. This was where
I played "Spy Hunter", "Tron", "Disc of Tron" (with
the surround sound booth cabinet!), and many, many others. This led us to look for cool arcades everywhere we went. Atlantic City was a place my parents liked to go, so we spent a lot of time in the arcades because we couldn't even go in the Casino. We had our company picnics at Knobels Grove where they had a large arcade that we spent many many quarters over the years. (It's still there, but with mostly new games. We still like to stop every time we go there. They still have a "Ms Pac Man" game, but the other classics are all gone.) I played "Stunt Cycle" here many times and never seen it anywhere else. The Bloomsburg fair had a HUGE arcade that I visit whenever there. Although it doesn't have classic games to the likes of "Venture" anymore. (The only place i remember playing this game.) Then there was the time we were camping on a scout trip and the place we stayed had an arcade. It wasn't spectacular, but it's where I played "Speed Freak" vs. some cute little blonde. Haven't seen either since. Bummer! The Schuylkill Mall in Frackville still has two arcades. One right by the Theater and one across from the pet store. Then there was the Roller Roost in Pottsville. I played many games there over the years and it is still there. I remember focussing on games like "Super Breakout", "Paperboy", and "Asteroids". A couple years there we even had a couple arcades at Jeck's. We played them every day at lunch. We had "Dig Dug", "Ms. Pac Man", and another one I can't quite remember. It was just too dirty at the shop and we had them removed. As kids, we stayed at a Hotel in Wildwood Crest every summer for usually a week for vacation. This hotel had a game called "Battlezone" in it's game room. I found myself drawn to this XY stick figure tank simulator. When we left, I always tended to look for this game. It definitely was one of my favorites. All this money being pumped into video games led my parents to buy us the greatest Christmas gift ever. It was an Atari 2600 home system. I bought a cartridge or accessory whenever a new one came out. All the arcade games where there. We spent hours playing games just to beat them. Activision had a program that if you beat some of the games a special screen came up at the end. If you sent a picture of the TV with the screen, they sent you a prize. I tried many times to get a picture to them only to have the Polaroid Instamatic fail to get the image properly. Boy, how photography has changed over the years. There were several different companies supplying the games for the Atari, but we bought almost all of them. Some kind of sucked, but most were great to a new teenagers eyes. The games really got good when the amount of memory grew and they went to the cassette loading systems that you would use to upload more data to the system when needed. They became very detailed. "Dragonstomper" comes to mind as one of our favorites. (We still have these systems and play them now and again, however Atari came out with the classics for the xbox, so we usually use that anymore.)I also remember the "Sword Quest" series of games. There were four games, one for each element. (Earthworld, Waterworld, Fireword, Airworld were the titles if I remember right.) they were puzzlegames with a comic book that came with it. You had to find the proper order of the clues and eliminate the false clues to find a phrase to send in. The first in each game won a 25,000 gem encrusted item from the game. (One was a Sword, one a Crown, I can't remember the rest at the moment.) I heard that two were won and the rest weren't because the company was sold and the contest went to the wayside. These were the days before the internet was the place to find all the answers and the games were confusing. Very confusing. There was not much actual game play and the clues were an obscure code that now seem to be kind of simple and obvious. I have since figured them out as an adult and they seem very easy now. Too bad I didn't see it that way as a teen. As I got older, the games began to change. I still look for the classics and play some of the very realistic racing games, but don't hit the arcades near as much. Then I came across a huge development in gaming. They called it "Virtual Reality". |
I saw a VR setup at Atlantic City one year. They were holding a tournament that would go all weekend. The high scores were posted and there was no prize, just the recognition of your name being up there. It was the coolest. You put on a helmet with the screen in the goggles, a set of gloves, and a belt. All these items measured your movements and operated your guns and jet pack. The game theme was a battle arena where several players were linked to at once. where ever you looked and turned your head, that's where you saw. It was very lifelike in the movements. The gloves controlled the jet pack, so you could fly, and the guns, so you could shoot the others. When the game started all players would go into the arena and battle it out for the highest score. The trick was flying. I learned that most people didn't look up or down, just around. I would fly up and shoot down at them from between my legs. (Which you could see the legs of the robot you were encased in. Cool!) This got me to the top of the board for the entire weekend with the score double what the second place guy had. The operator of the game was very impressed. So much that he invited me back to try out a new version before it was used in the tournament, which was cool. Heck, the guy remembered me when I showed up the next year again. I won that little tournament for years every time I went down for the car show in February. They don't have it anymore, but it was a cool time. If I ever come up with 10 grand to blow, maybe I will buy one and set it up somewhere. Now in the more recent years the home consoles and computer games have become very advanced to the Atari I had growing up. I had and played , Commodore 64, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Cd, Playstation, Playstation 2, and currently Xbox. I got hooked on computer games for a while. I played Myst, Heroes of Might and Magic, and Diablo heavily and am still playing Diablo II. Though the new systems and games are superior in every way with the exception of leaving anything to the imagination, I am still drawn to the "classics" Now I realize that the video games of the late 70's and 80's are considered classics. You can find almost any of them on Ebay at some point. there are even a couple of vendors who are local. I actually picked up a Battlezone game that was not working for free. The cabinet was beautiful and the inside looked like new. The person was moving out of Washington D.C. during the time of the sniper and wanted it gone. She said if I picked it up that weekend I could have it. I did. I tested the game and found loose connections were the cause of it's not functioning. I bought a spare board and got it working for 65 bucks. Now I am looking for several games to put along side my Battlezone classic. That game gets played often whenever I have a party and I enjoy it frequently. Now all I need is a "Lunar Lander", "Venture", "Ms Pac Man", "Speed Freak", "Tron", etc., etc., and ETC.! |